"The Matt Duffin Show" - Professor William Jarvis, Survivor

Kara Hackett contributed the following:  A car accident sudden halted Dr. William “Bill” Jarvis’s career at Taylor University Fort Wayne; leaving a severe traumatic brain injury.  The good doctor decided to use his knowledge - professor and Christian - to help him improve as a survivor.  Eventually, Jarvis’s road to recovery became a well-traveled path he calls the Jarvis Rehabilitation Method, now used to help victims of TBI at hospitals and churches around the country.  He encourages them to rediscover their cognitive capacities through motivation and inspiration.  Jarvis said. “My thinking used to be like a fog. But using this method, it got better. I give you strategies to make it better. The whole idea is that if you want to improve your cognition, you have to do cognition activities.”  Jarvis’s accident in December 2000 with shattered ribs, punctured his lung, fractured his C1-C4 vertebrae and left him in a coma for five weeks.  Following coma, he spent months in three different hospitals before returning to New Jersey for rehabilitation. About a year later, he came back to TUFW to teach; albeit one course before retiring in 2007.  While working, Jarvis joined a Fort Wayne BI Support group for people recovering from brain injuries. Following retirement, he was asked to co-lead the group.  Although Jarvis didn’t have a personal coach or pre written plan for recovering from his brain injury, he drew on motivation and inspiration strategies he learned as a TUFW professor and as grade school teacher and principal of 29 years. It’s a post-hospitalization plan that measures improvement in four categories, Jarvis's “dimensions of life”: social, cognitive, physical and psychological.  He offers cognitive exercises are important to improving a survivor’s cognition. Listen in,  such as Michelle Obama, Walter Reed and America has.